RPI Engineers 2017-2018

Summertime...and a time to look forward to a new season for the Engineers. I will post some comments soon on the freshman class and the prospects for this winter. In the meantime...any comments from others on where this team goes from here?

Weird timing for this decision for sure and a pretty lame reason from the AD. I felt JB should have been fired at the same time as the men's coach was. In my opinion that would have sent a stronger message of "We are committed to making both hockey programs better." Instead this sends the message of "Men's hockey is more important and the women's team can get by next year with just an interim coach instead of us doing a national search at the right time of the year like we did with the men's position." So which assistant coach do you think they'll name as interim? No matter what I hope they'll name someone with an actual personality and who is not afraid of making the right hockey decisions on a moment's notice instead of waiting forever to make changes and adjustments to try to improve things along the way.

Re: RPI Engineers 2017-2018

Originally Posted by shelfit

Weird timing for this decision for sure and a pretty lame reason from the AD. I felt JB should have been fired at the same time as the men's coach was. In my opinion that would have sent a stronger message of "We are committed to making both hockey programs better." Instead this sends the message of "Men's hockey is more important and the women's team can get by next year with just an interim coach instead of us doing a national search at the right time of the year like we did with the men's position." So which assistant coach do you think they'll name as interim? No matter what I hope they'll name someone with an actual personality and who is not afraid of making the right hockey decisions on a moment's notice instead of waiting forever to make changes and adjustments to try to improve things along the way.

Think there is more to the story? If you look at the SA's record and JB's not much difference.

The AD seems like he's very full of it. What a great guy to work for! Lol. I stand by my previous post in how the men's team is obviously treated with more importance than the women's team therefore inequitable treatment of the women's team by the AD himself.

Re: RPI Engineers 2017-2018

Originally Posted by shelfit

The AD seems like he's very full of it. What a great guy to work for! Lol. I stand by my previous post in how the men's team is obviously treated with more importance than the women's team therefore inequitable treatment of the women's team by the AD himself.

Re: RPI Engineers 2017-2018

Originally Posted by Ralph Baer

I am not convinced that the RPI administration regards either hockey team as important.

There is a lot of wisdom here folks. As someone who has followed the RPI women's team as closely, or more closely, than anyone else over the last dozen years, and listening to RB who has surely followed the men's team more closely than anyone else, I have to say that all of those who called for Seth Appert's head and for John Burke's head, may need to look a little deeper if they want to see a return to the days when "RPI" was equated with hockey excellence. Reading the comments of the AD on the lame justifications for firing Burke really cause me to doubt whether the admin is committed to hockey excellence.

Two things are clear: 1) we need to thank John Burke for his tremendous dedication to this program and wish him all the best in his future endeavours...a real class act who was respected by the young women who played for him; 2) we need to turn the page now and hope that RPI finds a positive path forward.

Re: RPI Engineers 2017-2018

Originally Posted by hab

There is a lot of wisdom here folks. As someone who has followed the RPI women's team as closely, or more closely, than anyone else over the last dozen years, and listening to RB who has surely followed the men's team more closely than anyone else, I have to say that all of those who called for Seth Appert's head and for John Burke's head, may need to look a little deeper if they want to see a return to the days when "RPI" was equated with hockey excellence. Reading the comments of the AD on the lame justifications for firing Burke really cause me to doubt whether the admin is committed to hockey excellence.

Two things are clear: 1) we need to thank John Burke for his tremendous dedication to this program and wish him all the best in his future endeavours...a real class act who was respected by the young women who played for him; 2) we need to turn the page now and hope that RPI finds a positive path forward.

Like any enterprise or endevour you need buy-in from the top down. Right now faith in the top truly seems to be lacking.

Though I take issue with your comments about justification of firing JB. If SA was canned how can you keep JB with the same results or worse. Part of 1) is questionable as well. If you are really that close to the program you would know. 2) Well maybe the right person gets picked for the HC position, but calling them interim will hurt recruiting. Not doing a national search is a bit of a joke. Seriously give me any logical reason a national search is not being done?

How do you think those young women feel at the moment being put in this position. Look at what happened at Union and why, that team is on the up.

Re: RPI Engineers 2017-2018

Originally Posted by Northbynorthwest

Like any enterprise or endevour you need buy-in from the top down. Right now faith in the top truly seems to be lacking.

Though I take issue with your comments about justification of firing JB. If SA was canned how can you keep JB with the same results or worse. Part of 1) is questionable as well. If you are really that close to the program you would know. 2) Well maybe the right person gets picked for the HC position, but calling them interim will hurt recruiting. Not doing a national search is a bit of a joke. Seriously give me any logical reason a national search is not being done?

How do you think those young women feel at the moment being put in this position. Look at what happened at Union and why, that team is on the up.

Let me try giving you one. Maybe there is not enough time to do a national search. With the season right around the corner, many established coaches are shifting their focus to the start of the season, or maybe, just maybe, Dr. McElroy thinks that the best candidate is already employed by RPI. With the schedule already out and the freshmen first year students coming back to school soon, continuity is important. Better to have a one year interim coach who's already familiar with the team, than to have no coach starting from scratch this close to the season. Besides, you can always re-evaluate at the end of the year and if it's not the right fit, you can do it right.

I am not convinced that the RPI administration regards either hockey team as important.

I'm sure the AD had made this decision a while ago, like right after the playoffs, but was just looking for what he thought was the right time to pull the trigger. No reason to wait this long if he really wanted to make it appear like he actually gives a poop about the women's team. This is just plain stupidity and disrespect for the program.

Re: RPI Engineers 2017-2018

Originally Posted by shelfit

I'm sure the AD had made this decision a while ago, like right after the playoffs, but was just looking for what he thought was the right time to pull the trigger. No reason to wait this long if he really wanted to make it appear like he actually gives a poop about the women's team. This is just plain stupidity and disrespect for the program.

Though I'm a member of the graduate school alumni of RPI and follow the school somewhat, I have to confess I'm not really in touch with RPI hockey closely these days. That being said, I offer a couple of thoughts here:

- Totally agree that this inidciates that women's hockey is less important than men's hockey. But is that surprising? Isn't that true at virtually every D1 school? Revenue vs non-revenue, high visibility vs low visibility, etc.

- Totally don't believe that the real reason they waited is that they could only do 1 national search at a time. I mean, it is even stupid for the AD to say something along those lines - makes him look like an idiot.

- More likely, something like this:
- School economics at RPI are not very good (debt is very low rated and they are struggling financially). This is a result (by majority opinion of alumni) of extremely poor fiscal management by the current administration and high investment in fringe areas (a massively expensive state of the art performing arts center at RPI??? Seriously??).
- The school has seriously upgraded its investment in D3 programs - see the football stadium and other new facilities that have been built in the last ~10 years. My guess is that these are imposing a very large depreciation and maintenance expense on the school that they probably poorly planned for. Additionally, many of these programs have been successful and they realize they are more of a draw for the school then D1 women's hockey.
- Severance packages, coach searches, and hiring coaches can be expensive. They probably have severe budget restrictions related to above and a salary cap on coach expenses. They needed to figure out how much the men's coaches were going to absorb of the available funding before they proceeded with the women's team. My guess is was a lot and more than they expected.
- Burke is probably well paid given he has been the HC for 14 years and likely has gotten annual raises. Cutting him was a savings (and easily justified). They will use a low paid interim this season, solving a short term issue for next season.
- They will do a national search next year in a different budget year when they can afford it. And they will go all U Maine on it to keep the costs down by underpaying the market.

Re: RPI Engineers 2017-2018

Given the source of our last two women's coaches (assistants from the men's program), I wonder if Brian Vines has lined a position for the coming year. He certainly has more experience than either of our women's team assistants. Perhaps he'd make a good interim coach while retaining the current assistants in their present roles to provide experience on the women's side.

As for this entire process, it's insane. "Interim coach" is a title that should only be used if you have to make an in-season appointment due to a major issue. Burke had just come into alignment with the new dynamics of recruitment which seems to have evolved from the men's side. Increasingly players are committing two and even three years out. Having a 9 month interim is a formula for losing all of the current recruits while putting the new, mid--2018 version in the unenviable position of starting from scratch with few freshman (at least when you terminate at the end of the year you generally keep most of the freshman if, for no other reason, than it's too late to make alternate plans) and no pipeline. Can you imagine even trying to recruit players for the next nine months? What can you tell them about the future of the program?